


Regis' Repast

by Lovelymayor



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Drunkenness, Gluttony, Inflation, Other, Transformation, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 09:13:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13831080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lovelymayor/pseuds/Lovelymayor
Summary: A gift story written for my girlfriend! She did the art you see inserted with the text. You can find her tumblr here: https://lasciviouslucius.tumblr.com/Regis spends some time in Toussaint, where his vampiric needs and past addiction catch up with him.





	Regis' Repast

“Tell me, what brings you to Toussaint?”

The vampire smiled, his lips pressed closely together. “As a recovering celebrant of a particular liquid, I find myself drawn back here every few years. Perhaps it is to test myself against all that heady revelry in which the men and woman of the duchy engage. However, I consider the presence of wine in glasses just as important as the wine in—”

“You could have said the blood.” Dandelion replied, uncommonly wryly for the troubadour. He was stroking his dark moustache and pressing down the fabric of his embroidered purple jacket. “I’m sure you mentioned it more than once when we were wintering here those years ago. Don’t look at me like that Regis, I may have been on the arm of my Anarietta all winter, but I know when a man’s coming in from a long night philandering. If I know anything other than poetry it’s that.”

Regis turned his head toward the bar and nodded, a gesture that was caught by the woman behind it, who sent another to the table at which he and Dandelion were sitting. The woman placed down a carafe of Est Est and two glasses. Dandelion thanked her with a twitched of his eyebrows, mouthing the words.

“Regrettably, my nightly affairs amounted to little more than that. When one is cut from my cloth, one cannot often avail oneself of relationships, to use mortal terms.”

Dandelion poured the wine effortlessly, without needing to take his eyes off the vampire. “You mean you don’t plow human women?”

Regis turned scarlet. “Not in so many words, my friend.”

Dandelion shrugged, pushing one of the glasses over to Regis. “If it’s any consolation, any human who has sex with another species is probably doing it with something that has four legs.”

Taking up his glass in his hands, his pointed fingernails tapping gently under the body, Regis sniffed the wine before taking a long, indulgent draught.

“Is it your poet’s tongue that creates such vivid impressions of humans as cattle for our kind?”

“That’s not how I meant it at all. Was that a joke? Are you smiling? For a species so concerned with liquid, your jokes are awfully dry.”

 

* * *

 

Toussaint was beautiful in the winter, but in summer, the sun brightening the contrasts of its emerald hills, the expanse of the Blessure Forest with its oak and beech groves, and the blue, cloudless sky. Regis knew this from his youth, but he was quickly becoming acquainted with it again. Now that the ceaseless march of the Nilfgaardians had ended in treaties, truces, and relative peace, there was little to worry about save a hanse of bandits on the highway.

Regis had decided to come alone this year, certain that Geralt, summering in Kaer Morhen for the purposes of cataloging and recovering witcher secrets before they disappeared. ‘So that the future can decide what to do with them.’ He had said. That was all well and good, because after the trouble two summers ago, Regis would rather not draw attention to himself by talking, travelling, and drinking with the famous witcher. The idea of a bit of peace and quiet – that is, no contacts, no friends – appealed to him, perhaps because of his self-imposed exile. As long as he stay peaceful, and quiet, there was no need for any further discussion about the events with Detlaff.

Dandelion proved an unlikely obstacle in this plan, because the troubadour had spotted him at The Pheasantry and immediately foisted himself upon him in the manner of old friends reunited. Regis was, of course, happy to see him, but really, couldn’t one do better than attract the attention of a world-renowned poet and musician when one is trying to remain inconspicuous?

Somehow Regis had managed to escape Dandelion’s company after a herald from the duchess appeared with urgent summons for the bard. Regis, desiring greatly anything but an audience with Anna Henrietta, for he was sure one more meeting would allow her to see through his veneer of humanity, absconded out the back door and into the darkened streets of Beauclair, the taste of wine still fresh on his tongue and teeth.

Ducking down alleyways didn’t quite make up his idea of a pleasant summer in Toussaint, but it simply needed to be done. The last thing, the absolute last thing that Regis was expecting to come across in the blue moonlight filling the alley was a bleeding corpse heaped against some boxes like a sack of old clothing.

Instinctively, Regis tucked his head down and crouched against the wall. Had someone seen him? He would have sensed it. His senses were unnaturally keen. Unfortunately, and he had hoped this wouldn’t be the case, the scent of blood permeated the air, piercing the smell of his bags of roots and herbs. It was rousing, the singular sanguinity of the blood speaking to its freshness. The man’s heart was still beating. He could sense it. He wasn’t a corpse at all, Regis realized.

The vampire hadn’t worked as a barber-surgeon in some years, but he remembered all his experience without thought or delay. His hands pressed into one of his bags to make use of the necessary tools for the staunching of blood and the stabilization of broken wounds. He found his needle and thread. Despite bloodied hands, forearms, and a calm celerity, the barber-surgeon failed to save whatever gasping trickle of life was left in the man’s body.

And now the blood was on his hands.

It hadn’t been there in years. He had not fought, he had not operated on the wounded, he had not even pricked himself on one of his own needles. Here he was, in the dark, with blood on his hands, and the corpse there in front of him. While it had died of acute hemorrhaging on account of three dagger-sized stab wounds, Regis was certain any coroner would settle nicely on vampiric murder, and his reputation as clean-fanged would be irrevocably shattered.

Why not, he supposed, go that one step further? If, after all, he is to be caught and blamed for the mess, it would be a shame for such an opportunity to go to waste. No one would miss a few drops of blood.

Regis began sliding his tongue over and around his fingers, languishing in the reverie that immediately came with his first taste of blood in years. It was as good as fresh, and though the human’s heart was no longer beating, had the full-bodied flavor of flesh contained in a, well, full body. He savored it like he had savored the Est Est not an hour before. He savored it like he would never get the chance again, not knowing where such savoring would lead him.

 

* * *

 

“Three bodies.” Anna Henrietta wrinkled up her nose as she paced in front of her throne, over which her arms had been draped moments before. Her long golden hair bounced as she turned back around. “Three bodies drained entirely of blood found in Our Beauclair and We are to understand no member of the guard or townsperson saw anything? Must we go Ourselves into the streets at night to witness evil deeds that We may report on them in Our own court?!” Her voice stung like a bee, and no back in Beauclair Castle was straighter than when she spoke so.

 

* * *

 

Regis felt himself losing his grip on his humanity from that first tentative lick of spilled blood. He felt his teeth lengthen and his brow knit in a bestial fashion, but he resisted any further transformation with a keen struggle of will against wantonness. Blood was a drug, and he was an addict. However, his status as an addict did not preclude his status of being a rational, thinking, and civilized creature in a world of uncivilized creatures, cultures, and traditions.

Blood defied this mental blockage by being utterly and incomparably delicious, such that Sangreal seemed like the spit of a horse afflicted with halitosis.

It did not take long for Regis to abandon his humanity, however much a semblance it was, and that was a matter for debate, and clean his hands entirely of blood, all the way up the wrist and forearm. Such an amount was like a sip from a pot of soup, and Regis found himself mouth-deep in one of the open wounds on the corpse’s back moments later, drinking as if from the side of a river or an underground spring.

Each powerful suck and slurp brought blood to the vampire’s throat the way water is drawn from a well by a bucket. Copiously, thought not swiftly, but with sufficient speed that Regis found himself with a full mouth and even swollen cheeks before he swallowed gratefully. Euphoria began to overwhelm his better judgment, and he took several minutes to lose himself in draining the body completely. Shamefully, he even sucked the wet, dark blood from the human’s clothes and licked the ground where it had spilled beneath him.

Such gluttony reminded of one night in Toussaint, a long time ago. A night he swore to himself that he would never repeat.

But he had drank a good friend of his dry not too long ago, in vampire terms. And that friend was a higher vampire. The power and pleasure that had suffused him in that period was greater than during his afternoon in the cage at Tesham Mutna. The blood of one of his own species, it had turned out, was so much more elegantly refined than that of a human’s that there really was no worthwhile comparison to make.

To taste that blood after such a long time was a blissful, red rose of remembrance that his indulgence in human blood now reflected like a dull looking glass. With a few more casks drained, Regis estimated he might again achieve such a profoundly ecstatic state, and that would be an experience worth having, if only because in a life of over four hundred years he had had it precious few times.

He had attained a bellyful of blood and felt the same appreciation for it that he imagined a human must after a meal of game and roast potatoes. The vampire, with aplomb, walked out of the alley. He planned to put as much distance between him and the corpse as possible, so as to avoid any untoward allegations, toward though they may be. He made his way to the edge of Beauclair, where the pavement met the road and, eventually, the wilderness. Immediately upon setting foot onto the high road leading East from the city, an arrow pierced Regis’ left breast.

Several years ago, Regis would have reacted quite differently. He was a peaceful creature and had no love for violence. One could say he was averse to it. In the past it had turned his stomach and frightened him. Not in the way that he imagined himself in any danger, however. Since then, he had experienced a great deal of events both weighty and inconsequential. Said events had the unexpected effect of inoculating him against his fears. He calmly picked the arrow from his chest, the flesh there already beginning to regenerate, turned it around in his hand, and looked at the head.

The tip was barbed, and the barbs curled around like fish hooks. Such arrows were illegal and were only used with the intent of horrific barbarism and bloodshed.

Regis noted two men rushing at him with swords from behind a few trees beside the road. He let the arrow fall from his hand and, not wanting to lose a good doublet to a sword swipe, bent away from the attempted blows and thrust a hand, lengthened with dire claws, into the stomachs of each of his would-be attackers.

As a higher vampire, he did not need to lower himself to bloodshed in order to protect his life. In essence, he did not need to kill humans even in self-defense. Despite the lack of an imperative need to fight back, these bandits, whoever they were, wanted to rob someone, and if it wasn’t his, it would be that of the next person to leave the city. They also wanted blood; great quantities of it, by the look of their arrows. Then, so be it.

So did Regis.

 

* * *

 

“Your Grace,” Damien de la Tour began, the firm, bald, mustachioed man, captain of the ducal guard, feeling like a cobblestone on the path beneath the enraged ruler’s shoes, “there’s no evidence of a vampire, none of the standard puncture wounds—”

Anna Henrietta scoffed coldly, but her hands were twisting and wringing each other. “Find Us a hunter of vampires, for We will not hunt a man while a vampire is the culprit. Toussaint has had enough threat from these monstrous interlopers for one lifetime. I want this beast’s head!”

“Yes, Your Grace. Please also consider that each of the bodies found was that of a bandit with a considerable bounty—”

“Only for so long will a fox hunt rats in the woods before it begins to crave a farm’s hens. Send your men, send your best and recruit the best you can find!”

 

* * *

 

“This will do nicely.” Regis rasped, freely baring his teeth at the throat of the hansa’s scout. “You are fit, lively, and I will squeeze every drop from you before continuing along my way. I do thank you for indicating the direction of your hideout.”

The vampire took the trembling brigand’s arm, bent it backward, and cracked it open, tearing the flesh at the elbow to the presentation of a resounding scream and a frightful gush of bright blood. His garments stained, Regis bent down to suck at the viscera and the blood pulsing from the wound with every beat of the heart. He drank until it slowed to a trickle. He suckled in a way that might have mortified him previously, but now, as the body grew moribund, his gluttony amused and pleasantly surprised him.

There was no disguising an indulgent vampire in the throes of a protracted bloodlust. Regis was bloated, his gut distending outward and beneath his doublet, stretching his belt around its girth like a full wine barrel. He was overfed, but he hadn’t had his fill, despite any feelings of fullness that were rapidly encroaching.

He tottered, flush with color, and dropped the body into a dry heap in the brush, sighing with a second’s content. Then, realizing far too late, he put a hand to his head and moaned not altogether undesiring. The human he had just finished off must have had a belly full of wine, because Regis was beginning to feel its full effects coursing through his own veins and sitting with a great liquid heft in his belly.

Smelling further feasts, the vampire gathered himself up, hiccupping and belching under his breath, hands on his throbbing stomach, and began to trek toward the location of the hansa outside Beauclair, both absolutely positive and completely unsure of what he intended to do there.

The scent of blood was like an effulgent beacon in the night, beckoning him rather like a mosquito eager to be even more obscenely overstuffed. He saw as easily as a human might see during the day, or, he mused, better than a witcher at night. There must have been ten or twenty humans in the vicinity of the dilapidated observation tower serving as their hideout. Bent oak trees surrounded it, errant stones and blocks strewn about between their trunks in patches of tall grass and thorny bushes.

Several arrows flew past Regis head as he carelessly trundled toward the tower. The brigands were sitting around fires, but several of them had gotten to their feet and taken to arms. Others were shooting arrows, but Regis seemed to walk right through them.

“’Eyy, what are you doing so far from Beauclair, you fat coinpurse?” One of them, with a messy black goatee, lurched forward with a sword. Regis caught him before he could raise it to strike, tearing his sword arm from his torso and with a heavy crunch biting down onto his neck to the shocked gasps of the other hansa members.

“And what, praytell, are you doing so far from my larder?” Regis replied as he drained the last pints of life from the twitching human. He dropped him with a thud and roared, unable to keep himself at bay. His face had already begun to transform to something more akin to a bat than a man, with a mouth of great, sharp teeth, vertical, triangular ears, and a large chiropteran nose. He had broadened his stance to make room for the burgeoning mass of his stomach as it bloated further with blood, and his hands sported scythe-like claws, rather like dinner forks, he thought drunkenly.

“I do apologize for all the fuss,” Regis talked as he walked toward the bandits, stifling a belch and brandishing his claws, “you see, I’ve not had a fine meal in some time, and the scent of your blood does excite my appetite so.” A flash of movement and he was at the throat of another bandit, guzzling with abandon, his cheeks and neck bobbing with great swallows of blood that squirted and dribbled from his lips. “The thought of you all lying supine, ghastly pale and empty is just too much. I fear I must clean you like a lot of plates.”

Regis’ gluttony had ruined him before when, some years ago, he had grown too drunk and a pogrom had gotten the better of him. It took many years to reform and was quite unpleasant. This time, however, he was a changed vampire, one who had been educated by his experience, and one who would not make the same mistake twice. He did not have to hold back here, in a den of murderers. Where in a town he may hesitate to kill when attacked simply as a consequence of his immortality, for he need not kill, here, amidst the hansa, he could kill and drink all he liked.

He did wonder, gleefully, as his claws rent and shredded through the bodies of the bandits, how much blood Geralt had spilt in a lifetime of situations like it, and whether the witcher might ever acquiesce to having him accompany him on his hunts, if only to drink the sweet, nectar-like blood of those he slew.

His appetite grew as monstrously as his body, in terms of his swollen girth and his true appearance, which had begun to manifest greatly. His clothes hung off him in tatters, having burst from his excessive gorging more than as a result of his transformation into his true form – that of a massive, man-sized, bat-like creature possessed of wings, claws, teeth, and a perhaps endless appetite for blood.

“Please, spare me!” One of the bandits begged, his blue tunic stained dark purple with the blood of his comrades.

“Come now,” Regis replied gutturally, great rivulets of blood dripping from his mouth as he loomed over the bandit, his width near surpassing his height, “as hungry as I am? As good as your blood smells? I only hope I can stop myself when I’m through with you…” The vampire who had refused to stop continued by taking a large bite out of the corner of the human’s torso where his neck and shoulders met. Regis felt his beating heart in his mouth and thrilled at the pleasure, far greater than what humans consider to be the height of orgasm.

“More blood! I must have more! I need more blood!” He shrieked petulantly.

His body pitched and sloshed with drunkenness more overt than a peasant at the Feast of the Wine Vat. Regis was nearly finished emptying his own wine vat, the last straggling bandits, whom he had injured to prevent their escape, dragging their bloody bodies toward the woods. He stomped toward them, groaning and grunting in a voice that mixed man with monster, his head swimming and his body awash with a tide of pleasure that seemed to rise and fall, fall and rise without end. He wondered how much he could drink before he burst. He wondered if he might ever again taste the forbidden fruit of the blood of another one of his kind.

He wondered both of these questions as he bit down into the chest of another bandit, taking with his blood a great deal of flesh.

“This encumbrance is so inconveniencing.” Regis muttered as he plodded toward the next and last bandit, an oversized brute who had likely made his living crushing travelers’ heads with a bludgeon. Now, he was blind with fear, the enormous bulk of the vampire completely blocking out the moon and the view of the sky above the trees as he loomed over him. The vampire had to roll onto his belly just to get low enough to snap up the bandit’s head, biting it clean off at the neck and spitting it to the side. He gathered his wings around the body and held it to his mouth, languidly relishing the continuing feast and denying it had an end. Glancing just below the dangling body, pressed against his sloshing cauldron of a belly, he nearly chuckled at the sight of the red hue his ballooned torso and belly had taken on.

Just as he wanted, Regis was surrounded by exsanguinated corpses and had become immense with greedy bloat. He basked in his feat momentarily before attempting to move, only to find out that ambulatory motion eluded him as a result of his overdrinking. He also found himself unable to fly, the useless flapping of his large, leathering wings serving only to frustrate him, but also to amuse him and pleasure him as he realized the true extent of his bizarre, perverse liaison with monstrous, bestial voracity the likes of which the world, human or vampire, had never seen.

He languished in a sort of terrific torpor, so pleased with himself, so ensconced in his gentle sloshing, his hiccupping and furtive belching, that he did not notice Damien de la Tour and his men approach from a line of trees, their crossbows raised and their weapons drawn.

“Oh, Captain, you seem to be tarrying, for this hansa of bandits has already been dealt with.” Regis hiccupped.

“That voice…” The captain’s eyes widened.

“Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy, at your service.” Regis introduced himself in a rumbling timbre.

“Should we shoot him, sir?” An eager lieutenant offered.

“No.” The captain’s stern voice changed. Regis and Geralt had saved Toussaint two years ago. Saved it from absolute, utter destruction. The scar on his face ensured he would never forget that. “Bring the horses around and get the cart.”

“For the bodies?” The lieutenant asked, lowering his crossbow and staring at the overblown bat-beast.

“No. For him.”

The cart could have held ten bodies at the most, but it strained as the ducal guardsmen pushed Regis, effectively rolling him onto the cart, which creaked heavily and earnestly in protest. It was like pushing a great sack of hot wine, and the very thought of what the beast might be filled with turned the stomachs of those with weaker constitutions.

“I do apologize.” Regis offered, the faintest hint of a blush about the fur on his cheeks. “For my state, but not my appetite. Where am I to be taken?” He asked without the faintest care in the world, completely inebriated and awash in the lusts inside his own head and body.

Damien didn’t answer.

 

* * *

 

The halls of Beauclair Palace, in their elven splendor, were empty, as had been arranged. It was late, near midnight, and the creaky belching of the immense vampire could be heard all the way in the audience hall. Duchess Anna Henrietta paced, awaiting news, good and concise news that would free her of one more preposterous supernatural headache and allow her to focus on more banal matters for once. Her pale yellow dress swished silently in the empty air.

A cart bearing a billowing, balloonish bat-beast was the last thing she expected to be brought, especially since she had asked for a head.

“Her Grace, The Duchess of Toussaint, Anna Henrietta. I present to you…” Damien had forgotten his full name. “Regis.” He gestured to the cart.

Regis gurgled and raised a wing to wave; he hadn’t become any less monstrous in the time it took the guards to bring him to Anarietta.

“Regis?” She demanded, every effort expended to keep herself from gaping in astonishment. “And why have you brought him here? You are to tell Us that Regis, who with the witcher saved Toussaint from The Beast and his minions, is the vampire who has been murdering the citizens of Toussaint?”

Damien coughed, clearing his through as the duchess’ eyes burned into him. “Your Grace, it’s not that simple, you see, every victim over the last two days, the three and… twenty of them—”

“Twenty?!” Her eyes darted from Damien to the vampire’s excessive belly.

“E-every victim has been a bandit. Murderers, each one. Three in Beauclair proper, and twenty making up a hansa which had occupied an old watchtower to the east. In short, he’s rid the city of some rabble and greatly increased safety on the highroads all the way up to and including Beauclair city itself. Each man had a bounty on their head.”

The duchess was silent for some time. Finally, she raised her head. “Leave us.”

“But Your Grace—”

“Now, captain; you have much more to fear from me than from him.”

Her words struck true, and Damien and his accompanying guards turned to leave on their heels. When they closed the door behind them, Anarietta turned to Regis. He smiled, all his teeth showing, and help up something in his claws. It was a heart.

“I could not resist bringing you a gift, let us say, a peace offering. You see, several winters ago I was imparted a tale by Dandelion, that of your meeting, and of your then-duke’s desire to see Dandelion’s heart cut out so that you might eat it. I wondered, perhaps, if you would like to try one, and see if you have a taste for it? It is an incomparable delicacy.”

Anarietta’s lips twisted up, and she fought a smile. “I cannot say I approve of your methods,” as she talked she circumvented the immobile vampire, occasionally glancing at the bloody organ he had proffered, “but of the results I am most impressed. I imagined I might hire a great number of men, or perhaps a witcher, to do such good in Toussaint. But now I am to understand I may as well have hired a vampire?”

“If such employment would ensure a steady flow – not of money, bear in mind – then I am sure I would be able to provide Your Grace a most invaluable service.”

Anarietta stopped near Regis head, looking with some degree of childlike fascination at his chiropteran features, his fur, teeth, ears and eyes.

Just then, the door burst open, and Dandelion allowed himself in, lute slung over his shoulder. He quickly swung it down around his arm and plucked a chord that seemed to punctuate his wonder.

“This is absolutely stupendous! I’ll have to write a ballad about this in its entirety!” He announced, striding up to the vampire and the duchess without so much as a curt nod of introduction. “The heroic vampire, the heady beast, who drinks ‘til he’s under the table, no, under the wine cellar, ha! He’s as big as a wagon!” Dandelion laughed and looked between the two.

“Julian,” Anarietta chided, “you must first acquire the vampire’s permission, and perhaps his aid in receiving a full, unadulterated version of the events, not clouded by the mortal fear of a few guards.”

Dandelion swiftly took Anarietta’s hand, kissing about the rings and her smooth skin, radiant in the somber torchlight. “My little weasel, you’re right as always. What do you say, Regis? Why don’t you walk me through it? Oh, Geralt’s going to be so jealous. He’s always jealous when I write ballads about other people.” Dandelion carefully nudged the vampire’s massive girth with the head of his lute and heard the subtle sloshing within.

“All right, I suppose no harm can be done by it.” Regis agreed. “But, you’ll have to go and fetch me some wine. It’s something of a thirsty story.”


End file.
